Kansas City Opt-Out Day Protest

Tuesday night I excited to get out of work and start my weekend. It was a long weekend with thanksgiving coming up. I took the Wednesday before thanksgiving off to clean house in preporation for Thursday, be with family visiting from out of town and to go to the protests at airports on the 24th. I was really excited about the protests on the 24th. To be honest, I was also a bit nervous. I was going to be walking into an area covered with government agents and employees. Tons of authoritarians and little policemen strutting around wielding their ‘authority’. This kind of thing always makes me uncomfortable. I contacted Cisse Spragins to see if I could catch a ride to the protest with her. She and her husband live right up the street and they are friends of ours. Cisse is the founder and president of Rockwell Labs and the chair of the Missouri Libertarian Party. Oddly enough Rockwell Labs is not named after Lew Rockwell who I know they are big fans of, the company was named before she was introduced to Lew Rockwell. I asked her a few weeks ago when my wife and I visited them a few weeks ago.

I got there around 9:30 and talked to Sean for a while. Sean O’Toole, (her husband)  is always a great guy to talk to because like me he tends to dislike the state and whenever he is around he will be talking some kind of shit about the government. Myself, I often just keep quite about my anti-state rhetoric around others. Not Sean. Just about every time I see the guy he has something to say that often highlights the failure of the state. I know it has to irritate some statists, but to me it’s wonderful to hear someone just ranting against the state so much. I can listen to anti-government rhetoric all day. Sean is the Libertarian Executive committee delegate for the fifth district here in Kansas City.

I discussed military recruitment and other anti-war topics with Sean at their house before we headed out to Kansas City International Airport. Sean was staying home smoking a turkey for thanksgiving. Upon hearing this my wife asked Cisse “how do you roll a turkey?” Sean said “you just needed a really big bong”

Cisse and I headed out to the airport. It was cold. We walked up and saw the other protesters standing by the main entrance to Southwest airlines. The Southwest entrance is the only one with a porno scanner at KCI. I came up and was grateful to meet kindred spirits standing by the entrance. There were at least two fellow Anarchists amid the mostly libertarian leaning group of protesters. Brad Spangler was handing out fliers by the entrance asking people if they wanted information on national opt-out day. Jim Davidson with his long Spooner Beard was staying a bit off to side with a ‘press’ badge and his camera. I stood up by Brad and handed out fliers to people. I smiled. It was my intent to be as kind and inviting to people I was offering literature to. Even if I got hostile remarks I continued to smile and tell people to ‘have a nice day.’

Right up the street was one state car. I’m not sure which authoritarian institution they were with, but they just sat there watching and filming us. There were plenty of photographers and camera crews. I would estimate that we had about 20 to 30 protesters total. The number would increase around eleven. We arrived a few minutes after ten. Brad suggested we take some literature to the tunnel entrance below where we were. I was all about hitting it up to reach more people, but nobody seemed interested in joining me on this. I was not about to go to an entrance away from the others for the same reason I did not want to drive up alone. I simply do not trust authoritarians with their little badges, uniforms and guns. I was not about to be put in a situation where I had to deal with one on my own.

Cisse and I then headed down to the other entrance where another group was standing around with Tracy Ward.  It seemed that this group was attracting a more volatile response from people. I continued to be nice and hand out literature. I handed it to everyone who would take it TSA employees, airport employees, people of the system and passengers even some people with the media. I would say that maybe one out of every ten I offered literature to took it.  Cameras were everywhere, so without drawing attention to myself I would simply walk behind or around them. It’s not that I was opposed to having my picture taken, I just would prefer not to. This was easy since I had no sign like the others just fliers from wewontfly.com. Passing out fliers kept me just out of sight of the cameras.

I talked to some of the other protesters to see just who among them might me fellow anarchists, but I had no luck. Still, many were no doubt libertarians which isn’t half bad for me. It was there at the second entrance that I met Kevin Kobe. He was also passing out fliers. He offered a younger couple a flier when they went off. She was yelling about how someone was going to bomb us and how we were going to blow up in airplanes, despite the fact that no terrorist in the U.S. has ever actually blown up an airplane. She was clinging to her fear, reciting the fear-mongering lies of her beloved state. Kevin offered her a flier she snatched it from his hand and threw it right back at him. “ASSAULT! ASSAULT! I was Assaulted!” he yelled out. Her lanky boyfriend jumped into fight mode. He was wearing his little “I am a veteran” baseball cap. This was the kind of guy who will go his whole life defining himself by something he once did which was spend a couple years in the army blindly submitting to the state. He was billy bad ass and we weren’t going to question his all-mighty state.

“That’s wasn’t assault.” he said when he got up in Kevin’s face. Then he blurted out something I can’t quite remember implying that Billy Bad Ass here would show him just what assault was. The guy was angry and no doubt was running off of the adrenaline pumping through his body. They were in aggressive fight or flight mode. There were a few more words exchanged mostly from the angry conservatives until they road raged their way out of there in their little red car. They looked quite silly with the windows rolled up. We could see them yelling but could not hear them.

This response of aggression and anger towards us was not uncommon from some of the more conservative individuals we encountered. One guy pulled off his best cocky attitude while he mumbled something I could not hear. I thought he was saying something about ‘it’s a lie’. He kept saying something others said it was ‘get a life’. I saw him a few other times out smoking, so I kept smiling and offering him literature pretending not to recognize him. It irritated him. I was proud I could get under the skin of someone so authoritarian and so full of aggression and anger. A few others told us we should be ashamed and some were going on about bombs and other fear mongering random phrases they picked from Fox news. It seemed that the white people were the rudest in general. Not to say the majority was, but the most hateful angry group we encountered seemed to be upper middle class white people. I am not shocked at all.

As we stood there I saw a flier blow across the street. I ran out to grab it and “Rip” I had a blow-out. As I bent over to pick up the flier I ripped the crotch right out of my jeans. Well, I guess it would just make things easier for TSA. They had more immediate access to  my junk.

As time progressed more and more media showed up. Some of the protesters were interviewed. I made my way behind and away from the growing mass of cameras just passing out my fliers and starting conversations with fellow protesters. One guy in particular seemed interested and asked a great deal of questions to Jim Davidson. I’m fairly certain he was a service member of some sort. Others seemed to have a sort of conspiracy paranoia that he was a government agent milking us for information. It seemed that he was frustrated or irritated by the time the conversation ended. It was in that conversation I could see that not all the protesters had the same end goal or were really there for the same reasons.  My intent in all of this is simple. I want the department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration completely abolished.

Two TSA agents passed making a claim that they had been scanning people for ten years. I found that particularly interesting in light of the fact that the TSA has only existed for nine years since November of 2001 when it was formed in the Patriot Act. They were particularly cocky and authoritarian speaking to protesters in a demeaning manner. It reminded me far too much of every dick head pig and asshole militant I have dealt with in my life. Statist tyrant authoritarians all seem the same. They all tend to embrace the power they are granted by their titles and look down on the lower class who does not know the redundant statist tactics and apolagetics they are fed. I had enough of the bullshit in the Corps. It’s all the same. If it wasn’t for assholes like them I may have never become the anarchist I am today. They are the kind of assholes who really helped me see the true nature of the state.

The protest came to a close at noon. Here is the part that chaps my ass. Someone applied for a ‘permit’ through the state agency to hold the protest. Really? We beg permission from the state to speak against the state. The bullshit is deep. The permit was only until noon. As noon approached more and more Airport Police and TSA bastards started to gather around. It seemed as if their approach were as if they expected to have a confrontation with us. I find it extremely telling by looking at who exactly was approaching the day with a mindset of aggression and confrontation and who was approaching people as human beings being kind and agreeable.

Overall I’m glad I went. It was nice to be around others who oppose the state. Now we must not let the issue die. We must stand our ground until the TSA is abolished.